


What We Hold Onto

by blackeyedblonde



Series: -What We've Got- Verse [6]
Category: True Detective
Genre: Banter, Cats, Comfort Reading, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Husbands, Kid Fic, Love, M/M, Old Married Couple, POV Alternating, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 04:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11661243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: The slimmer sequel to What We’ve Got, featuring two old rednecks happily growing older together. Much love, domestic nonsense, and plenty of weekends spent entertaining the grandbaby. This is basically gratuitous comfort reading and spans a period of several years in Rust and Marty's future together; rating will probably increase for later chapters, so stay tuned for some retirement community romance.





	What We Hold Onto

   
  
The landline rings on a Thursday evening just a few minutes after they’ve cleared the remnants of supper from the kitchen table. Marty is already up to his elbows in soap and water, scrubbing a skillet he hadn’t meant to char the bottom of, and eyeballs the phone on the counter while it chimes in some electric imitation of an old bell ringer.

“Rust!” he hollers, using his wrist to push down the sink tap so the running water isn’t so loud. “Hey Rust—could you get that? My damn hands are all wet.”

He doesn’t hear the thud of Rust’s heels on the hall carpet, though the man seems to almost instantly materialize from nearby with a shirt he must’ve been in the middle of folding slung in the crook of one arm. He picks up the phone on the last ring after glancing at the ID and presses the answer button, slowly bringing it up to cradle between his ear and shoulder.

“Hello,” he says, soft and warm enough without all the sharp syllables reserved for business or strangers. Marty knows right then it’s either one of the girls or Maggie on the phone, though he bides his time and doesn’t ask while he soaps up his sponge and gets back to scouring with a little less elbow grease.

“Poppy or Grampa, hmm,” Rust says from across the kitchen, bumping his hip into the counter to prop himself up into a lean. “I don’t know if they live here—you sure you got the right number, little girl?” He looks up and slowly winks at Marty, tip of his tongue pressing into the corner of his mouth while he tries to bite back a grin.

“You better quit with all your devilment and put that baby on speaker so I can talk to her,” Marty says with a snort, flicking soap and water in Rust’s direction so a few spots dampen the blue cotton of his shirt. “Mercedes Delilah!” he shouts. “Can you hear me? It’s Grampa.”

Rust presses another button on the phone and the tiny voice of a five-year-old fills the kitchen. “I can hear you, Grampa,” Lilah says, shuffling around with a giggle on the other end. “You gotta tell Poppy to stop tellin’ stories _._ ”

“She was onto you before you even got started,” Marty says, cutting an appreciative look across the kitchen at Rust. “Sharp as a tack.”

“I taught her everything I know,” Rust drawls, only halfway joking.

Marty arches a brow at that and then pipes up louder for the phone, damp hands resting at the edge of the sink now. “What you calling for, baby? Does your mama know you’re on the telephone?”

“I’m right here, don’t worry,” Audrey’s voice sounds from somewhere further away. She seems to move closer to the phone, probably crouching down next to Lilah when she next speaks. “Didn’t you have something you wanted to ask Grampa and Poppy?”

“ _Yesss_ ,” Lilah says in a little singsong voice, suddenly touched with something bashful. “Can I come spend the night with you tomorrow night? So we can have a sleep-over.”

“A sleepover!” Marty says, winking while he watches Rust drop down to lean on his elbows against the countertop. Their eyes meet and hold across the kitchen, sharing a look of mutual agreement without speaking a word. “What if Poppy and I don’t have sleeping bags?”

“You don’t need ‘em, Grampa,” Lilah says, matter-of-factly this time, though she giggles like he really ought to know better. “You and Poppy already got a bed.”

“Oh, that’s right—must’ve slipped my mind,” Marty says, humoring her. “Well I’ll tell Poppy to clear his schedule and your mama can bring you over whenever you’re ready. We’ll put you to work out in the yard all weekend so you can earn your board and keep.”

“Yay!” Lilah shouts.

Audrey groans over the speaker, long-suffering. She’s probably dipped her head into her hand and let a messy curtain of blonde waves fall over her face. “Jesus, Dad.”

“I’m kidding, honey,” Marty says, and then signs off with a brief farewell. “I gotta finish cleaning up this kitchen, so I’ll give you back to Poppy for now. See you tomorrow, ladybug.”

Rust picks up the phone and presses a button before bringing it back up to his ear, turning to look out the glass door to the patio. Morning light filters in and creeps closer across the carpet, shivering as the trees move outside. “Pack your bathing suit in case it gets hot,” he says. “Maybe we can convince Grampa to turn on the sprinklers out back.”

“Okay,” Lilah says, and then pauses while the receiver rustles against her hair. “Mommy says we gotta go meet daddy for lunch, so I gotta go now.”

“Alright Miss Lilah,” Rust says. “I’ll see you tomorrow sometime. Be good for your mama and daddy.”

“I will!” Lilah promises. “Love you Poppy, talk to you later.”

Rust smiles just the same as every other time he’s heard her say that. The first time had felt like a jolt of surprise in his gut, though it’s mellowed out into a softer pang of warmth as the years have gone by. “Love you too.”

He sets the phone back in the cradle once she’s gone and shakes out the shirt he’d been holding in the crook of his elbow the whole time. It’s one of Marty’s work polos; a pale lilac color that looks like something sickly-sweet from Easter, but it’s fresh from the dryer and smells like clean cotton. Rust straightens the collar and folds it where he stands, silently remembering how the color seems to make Marty’s eyes and hair shine all the more vibrant, all sapphire and sterling.

He wouldn’t ever wear color like this, but it works well on Marty.

“She’ll probably stay ‘til Sunday night, so we gotta figure out something to fix for supper that’s a little heartier than cheap beer and cold cuts,” Marty says from over by the sink, drying a pot with a rumpled dishrag. “You told her to bring her bathing suit, right? Don’t let me forget to start filling up that little swimming pool.”

“Mmhm,” Rust hums, folding Marty’s shirt in half again before turning to head back toward the laundry room. “Figured that might wear her out enough for a nap in the afternoon.”

“Spoken like a true veteran,” Marty says, heartfelt.

“I ain’t holding any delusions about it,” Rust’s voice comes from somewhere down the hall, the sound of it edged with a smirk. “By the time suppertime rolls around, I imagine you and me both’ll be more than ready for one too.”  


* * *  
  


They rise early on Friday, shower and dress for the day and then sit in easy silence in the kitchen, rustling through the newspaper over a breakfast of black coffee and toast. Marty reads with his glasses on his nose and his chin resting in hand, flipping over from the sports section to the classifieds. He thumps something on the newsprint with his middle finger before reaching for his mug. “Somebody over toward Crowley is selling their four-door Ford. Say it’s a 2007—candy apple red and cloth seats, if you were going for nostalgia.”

“I ain’t looking to buy,” Rust says around a mouthful of toast. He doesn’t pull his eyes up from the crossword he’s been working for the past ten minutes. “Truck I got runs fine.”

Marty sighs but doesn’t push it, licking his thumb to turn over to the next page. “What about a foosball table? We obviously need one of them—free to anybody who wants to drive to New Iberia and pick it up. And then here’s two dairy goats for sale the next column down, of all fucking things.” He lets out a quiet snort this time, squinting down at the ad again. “Twins from last spring. Maybe we ought to buy the pair and get rid of the lawnmower for good.”

“Thought you liked mowing the lawn,” Rust drawls, ignoring the goats and Marty’s attitude entirely, eyes slowly rising up from his crossword. He taps the cap of his pen on the table and then reaches for his coffee, watching Marty with an unreadable expression painted across his face.

“I do,” Marty insists, sitting up a bit straighter in his chair. “Doesn’t necessarily mean I wanna mow it all the fuckin’ time, now does it?”

Rust’s mouth curls up on one side, though if he had anything he wanted to say it’s cut off clean by the sound of the doorbell chiming through the house. It startles Marty enough that his glasses slip down his nose before he scoots back from the kitchen table. “Is that Audrey with the baby already?” he says, glancing down at his watch. “It’s just now ten in the morning.”

“You know Lilah was probably up and ready to go by seven—Audrey probably had to hold her off for a couple hours as it is,” Rust says, though he stands and leads the way to the front door, shuffling along on bare feet. The cuffs of his jeans are fraying where his boot heels have long since started wearing through the denim, and Marty ponders getting him a new pair or two but then decides there’s no real use. Rust’ll wear something until it’s threadbare and falling off him, and all that aside, Marty always liked the way the worn jeans sling low around his hips when he doesn’t wear a belt.

Sure as anything, there’s a pair of silhouettes visible through the frosted glass where they stand on the porch—one slim and petite and the other tiny and half the size as the first. Before Rust can get a hand around the doorknob a little nose and two hands press against the window, trying to get a peek inside, and Marty knows he’ll have to Windex the smudged fingerprints away later but can’t find it in him to mind all too much.

“Who’s this?” Marty teases when Rust opens the door to find Audrey and Lilah peering in at them with the brightness of morning light shining hot and golden all around. “I didn’t put an order in for any little orphan girl that I can remember. Did the milk man drop y’all off in his cart?”

Lilah scrunches her face up and laughs, jumping into Marty’s open arms anyway to wrap her hands around his neck. He hoists her up, tiny pony-printed backpack and all, and smacks a noisy kiss on her cheek. “Oh, I remember who you are now—my favorite little ladybug.”

Rust lets Audrey step past him into the house before she leans into him for a small hug. Her hair is piled up on top of her head in a bun and it bumps Rust in the chin as he squeezes her arm before turning to where Marty has brought Lilah inside. She’s still perched in his arms but leans forward for a kiss until Rust catches her.

“I got a present for you, Poppy,” Lilah says while he carries her toward the living room once Audrey has hugged Marty and set her keys down. “I made one for Grampa, too.”

“A present,” Rust says, dropping down onto the couch with Lilah settled in his lap. “Is it a surprise?”

“Nope, it’s right here in my pack-pack,” Lilah says, slipping her arm out of one of the straps to pull the bag around. She unzips the small compartment on the side and reaches in to dig around, pulling out what looks like a plastic beetle and a purple marker before she produces something mostly hidden in her fist, save for a length of string Rust pretends not to see poking out on one side.

“You gotta pick a color first,” Lilah says enigmatically. “Blue or green?”

Marty and Audrey are talking over the kitchen bar a few steps away, looking at something pulled up on Audrey’s phone. “Blue or green, Marty?” Rust calls over to them, waiting until the man in question has looked up with a mildly puzzled look on his face.

“What for?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“It’s not a _surprise_ , Poppy,” Lilah insists.

Marty wrinkles his nose up for a second in what might be a perfect imitation of the expression that had graced Lilah’s face earlier, thinking. “Green.”

“Guess that means I want blue,” Rust says, and then watches as Lilah’s little hand opens up to reveal two lengths of what looks like braided twine.

“My friend Samira taught me how to make it,” Lilah explains, loosely looping the bracelet around Rust’s wrist. “You wear it for a really long time and when it breaks your best wish comes true.”

“My best one, hmm?” Rust says warmly. “Go give Grampa his and we’ll fix them up in a little bit. I might need to think up a wish or two.”

Lilah slides the rest of the way out of her backpack and hops down from his lap. “That’s a good idea,” she says before scampering over to give Marty his gift while Audrey looks on with an amused look on her face. Ghost appears a moment later at the mouth of the hallway and lets out a loud meow, sending Lilah scurrying off to greet her.

“Looks like my work here is done,” Audrey says with a snort before going to gather her keys back up, and it isn’t lost on Rust that she’s got about three of Lilah’s little creations tied around her ankle in shades of pink and periwinkle. “Just the weekend drop-off and pickup crew—mommy’s glorified chauffer service to and from Grampa’s house.”

“Let me walk you out, honey,” Marty says, leaving his bracelet on the counter when they move toward the front door. “Mercedes Delilah, come tell your mama goodbye!”

Once Audrey’s car has disappeared down the block and Lilah has run back inside to tear down the hall toward the guest bedroom with her backpack and a cat hot on her heels, Rust and Marty stand across each other on opposite sides of the kitchen bar, looking at the little woven strands of blue and green.

“Remember that time,” Marty says suddenly, with a foggy and far-off look in his eyes, “when you had notched that belt around your arm—”

“Yeah,” Rust says simply, though he’s not really bothered by it. He picks up his bracelet and holds it out. “Help me put this on real quick.”

“We’ve got friendship bracelets now, I reckon,” Marty says a few minutes later, looking down at the cord newly knotted around his left wrist. His voice lowers just a tad and takes on a funny tone, a bit tilted on one side. “You think she’s a little young to be getting into that Kumbaya shit?”

Rust shrugs one shoulder, reaching up to finger around the tassel of his bracelet. “Most kids her age believe in magic, is all it is,” he says. “Might as well pretend our wishes come true.”

“You got one in mind already?” Marty asks, watching Rust from the corner of his eye. His voice carries the jaded cynicism that comes with every corpse and horror they’ve seen in this life, some of it together and the rest of it apart, but Rust hears a tiny thread of something else caught in there. Like maybe some part of Marty wants to believe, wants _Rust_ to believe, if only for the sake of sharing that little secret between them.

“Maybe,” he says cryptically, though his hand moves across counter to brush two fingers against the inner side of Marty’s wrist. “What about you?”

“Sure do,” Marty says, sticking his thumb under Rust’s bracelet to tug on it, teasing. “It’s a secret.”

“You and I both know you can’t keep a secret,” Rust says, eyes following Marty as he turns to breeze down the hall to the guest bedroom where they can hear Lilah chiding Ghost about getting into her backpack.

Marty barks out a laugh as Rust moves to saunter along in his wake. “And _you_ won’t know it ‘til you find out.”  
  


* * *  
  


The weekend moves faster when there’s a little girl in the house, a far cry from the usual drowsy sweep of daylight and long afternoons spent fishing or working in the back garden, always punctuated with a couple of cold beers and an open view of the sun dipping in the sky.

Lilah is vibrant and curious and so full of life that it seems to buzz around her in full-body halo at times. Rust doesn’t believe in true auras, at least ones that aren’t tricks of light playing old games on his retinas, but he thinks he sees the air around her tinged salmon and lavender sometimes when she runs across the yard with laughter caught in the wind behind her.

She plays and sings and dances with Marty to country music playing on the radio, thinks up make-believe games and sometimes ropes Rust and even the cat into playing side parts in each new adventure. Even when she’s quiet and still there’s something to be marveled at, how she fits a puzzle together after carefully turning all the pieces or chooses crayon colors for a picture one at a time, and Rust watches her with the sort of wonderment he wasn’t allowed to dwell on in past lives. The first because the light burnt out after two short years; the second, because by the time looking at Marty’s girls didn’t hurt anymore, they’d already grown up into young teenagers who let him in the front door for weekend cookouts with bored greetings of _Hey, Mr. Cohle_ , no matter how many times he’d said to _just call me Rust._

Poppy was just another character at first, Rust thinks sometimes. That day Audrey went into labor and he’d thought about walking out of the hospital he’d driven to while Marty wrung his hands in the passenger seat the whole way there, making nervous jokes about being too damn young to be a grandpa. The same day they’d asked him to come into the hospital room and placed a little swaddled bundle in his hands, and he hadn’t quite know who he was in All This at the time or whether he could be allowed to be near such a small and precious thing named for a flower, but it’d worked out, somehow. Mostly because Marty was there to guide him into it, gentle and steady as anything, but also because like everything else they’d stumbled into together since Carcosa, it was easy once you let it be.

These days, Poppy is just another name. He answers to it and has started writing it on birthday cards once a year in his slanted handwriting next to Marty’s boxy block letters. Smiles when Lilah tells Marty that _you’re pretty good Grampa but_ _Poppy is the best-est at hide-n-seek_ and laughs when she yells _Poppy no!_ after he steals a bite of her ice cream cone.

And so today, on just another Saturday spent being Poppy in a line of many more Saturdays to come, Rust is standing at the kitchen counter spreading peanut butter on their last four slices of bread while Marty sits making a grocery list at the table. Lilah is across from him with her feet swinging above the floor, drinking pink lemonade made from powdered mix and munching on slices of cheddar cheese that she keeps biting into different shapes.

“Look at this one, Grampa,” she says, holding up a piece that vaguely looks like a crude kidney shape to Rust’s eyes. “It’s a polar bear.”

Marty only briefly glances up from over the tops of his glasses before looking back down to scrawl something on his list. “Are you supposed to be playing with your food, Mercedes Delilah?”

“No- _o_ ,” Lilah says in a solemn voice, feet still swinging under the table. She bites a chunk out of her so-called polar bear and then looks up as Rust sets a quartered peanut butter sandwich down in front of her on a paper towel. “Are you gonna eat peanut butter too, Poppy?”

“Yes ma’am,” Rust says, picking up a piece of the sandwich and taking a bite. “You finish the rest so we can go up town and get something good for supper.”

Lilah chews around a mouthful of peanut butter and contemplates that for a moment before proposing another idea. “What about ice cream?”

“If you behave yourself at the store and eat your supper, we’ll talk more about ice cream,” Marty says, taking half a sandwich Rust passes to him. “Until then—no promises, little missy. I remember what happened last time.”

Last time, Rust recalls, had involved an overtired and cranky preschooler crying honest-to-God tears about the “wrong kind” of popsicles. She’d laid down on the living room floor and sobbed herself to sleep, and maybe it was wrong to be relieved when the weeping finally tapered off into weaker snuffles and then soft snores, but then they’d picked her up and carried her to bed and that had been the end of ever buying cherry popsicles again.

“Hmm,” Lilah says, suddenly pretending to look at something on the wall with newfound interest. “I don’t think I remember too good.”

Marty laughs as he stands up and bends to press a kiss against the top of her head on his way toward the sink. “Uh-huh, I bet you wouldn’t.”

  
  
  


An afternoon rain storm is just beginning to taper out when they pull into the grocery store parking lot. The asphalt is soaked and waterlogged with shallow puddles and Lilah stands near the back of the car with her fingers wrapped around Rust’s ring and pinky finger, looking between her white sandals and the rainwater.

“Don’t even think about it,” Rust says before she can finish her thought, reaching down to scoop her up and hoist her against his hip. It’s still lightly sprinkling, barely more than a fine mist dotting the backs of their arms and shining in their hair, but Marty makes a point to fish an umbrella from the car’s trunk all the same.

“Just in case it’s storming when we head back out,” he says, reaching up to lightly tug at the hem of Lilah’s shorts as they start walking toward the front of the store. “Can’t have any sweet things melting in the rain.”

“Girls are tough, Grampa,” Lilah says, flexing her arm to show off a tiny bump of muscle while Rust’s mouth twitches at the corner. “I wouldn’t melt.”

“Of course not,” Marty says, shaking his head in earnest before cutting his eyes over with a wicked look. “I was talking about Poppy.”

Rust doesn’t bother to challenge that, though he keeps looking straight ahead while Lilah giggles in his arms, the two of them still navigating around deeper puddles on the concrete.

“Poppy’s not sweet,” Lilah says. “He’s _handsome_.”

“Well maybe I think he’s both,” Marty says, maybe a little quicker than he’d really meant to, because the tips of his ears burn a bit pink before he clears his throat. “You’re pretty and tough at the same time, aren’t you?”

“I guess so,” Lilah says with all the diplomacy of a five-year-old. “But a whole lot more tough than pretty.”

“That’s my girl,” Marty says as they walk in through the sliding doors. “You remember to tell all the little boys that when they start chasing after you in ten years.”

Lilah screws up her mouth while she thinks that over. “What if they don’t listen?”

“Then you call me and Grampa,” Rust says, reaching up to fix her ponytail. “And we’ll take care of it.”

He finally sets Lilah down on the tiled floor of the brightly-lit lobby, the two of them walking over to look at the fresh flowers while Marty pulls a grocery cart around. His list is tucked in his shirt pocket and he pulls it out to squint from top to bottom again, checking to see which stop is the closest.

“Do you wanna divide and conquer this or stick together?” he asks while Rust picks up a wrapped bouquet of peach-colored roses and brings them down to Lilah’s level so she can smell. “Maybe faster if we split up since the damn line at the deli is about two miles long.”

“We’ll take the list and meet somewhere in the middle,” Rust says. He’s somehow gotten used to this being something he says in a fluorescent-lit warehouse festooned with colorful capitalism and the hubbub of old ladies bickering about coupons in lieu of something he would’ve once said to Marty when they were canvassing the streets on a murder case. “I’ve got Lilah with me.”

“Alright,” Marty sighs, pulling a paper ticket out of the deli’s number machine. “Behave yourselves.” He watches them round the corner and disappear down the first aisle, Rust squinting down at the list held at an arm’s length. He needs reading glasses just as much as Marty does these days, though he’s been slower to admit to it and is holding onto any scrap of stubbornness he’s got left to spare on the matter.

Marty imagines he’ll eventually have to corral Rust into a drugstore somewhere and pluck readymade frames off the rack until they find a pair he can see through, but Christ only knows when that’ll be. Rust’s chief saving grace lately has been that most children’s books are printed with oversized letters big enough to see from halfway across the room, considering Lilah won’t settle down at night unless they’ve been through a storybook or two before bedtime.

It always has to be Rust, too. Marty tries not be sore about that, but even with all his put-on character voices and longtime penchant for spinning a good yarn, Lilah still likes listening to Rust read the best. You win some and you lose some with kids, he figures—and so he cut his loss there without a fight and only settles down on the other side of the bed to listen to Rust read about fairy princesses and talking elephants, too. Sometimes he even falls asleep before Lilah does and only wakes up when there’s a warm hand on his shoulder and Rust is motioning for him to get up and come to bed.

Yeah, he thinks, smiling a little to himself. It could always be a whole lot worse.

The deli line moves slow and Marty thinks about a whole bunch of nothing in particular. The number 73 printed on his ticket, the song playing over the broadcast system, what the hell the woman standing in front of him has tattooed around her ankle. He looks down at the woven bracelet still snug around his wrist and wonders if he’s really got any wishes left he needs to come true, if he’s got everything he needs or if something’s somehow managed to slip his mind.

Seventy-three pops up on the _serving now_ screen behind the deli counter and the clerk calls his number out for good measure. Marty goes through his mental list and orders what he thinks they need—most of it for him and Rust to make sandwiches during the coming week, maple turkey and swiss and a half-pound of salami, the usual old fare.

When his fixings are wrapped up and ready to go, Marty thanks the clerk who helped him and heads off through the produce department. Rust and Lilah can’t be too far down the grocery list just yet, and he keeps his eyes open for them but doesn’t hurry. Stops and ponders something new they’re selling that claims to be a cross between a cherry and a plum, and then peers down the first three aisles with no sign of who he’s looking for.

Marty’s standing in front of a long wall of cereal boxes, reading the new sale sign on honey nut cheerios when somebody draws in a gasp from somewhere behind him and whispers, “Oh, my Lord.”

“Martin Hart, I can’t believe it,” a woman says before he can turn around to find her, though he’d know probably that voice even if he were struck dumb and blind in the dark. “After all these years, baby, that had better be you!”

“Cathleen?” Marty says, turning just as she barrels into him and wraps her arms around his neck, nearly knocking all the deli packages into the floor as she squeezes. He laughs once all the wind fills back up in his lungs and returns her hug, trying to talk through the thick halo of curls around her head. “Well I’d sure hope it was me, considering you just about tackled me to the floor in the cereal aisle.”

“You low-down dirty old dog, seems like I haven’t heard from you since right after you left the force,” Cathleen says, stepping back and thwacking him on the arm. She’s smiling too big to be angry, though, and there are crow’s feet gathered at the corners of her eyes he doesn’t quite remember. “You could’ve called an old girl, you know—let me know your ass was still alive.”

Marty smiles at her and draws in a deep breath, overcome with the realization of how much he’d missed hearing her voice. Buoyant and bright in the midst of all those years bent over murder cases and paperwork, all the while something else he must’ve taken too much for granted.

“I’m sorry, darlin’,” he says, slipping back into old habits like a familiar glove. “It’s so good to see you, Cathleen—it really, really is.”

“Likewise, sugar,” she says, giving him an up-and-down look and a teasing wink. “We both look pretty damn good for our age, don’t you think? And look at you, all handsome with this salt n’ pepper beard. It’s a miracle I even recognized you.”

“A lot has changed,” Marty says, just meant to be something conversational, and feels his heart jump at how she doesn’t even know the half of it.

“Amen to that,” Cathleen says in kind, fanning herself a bit with a coupon book she picks up from her abandoned shopping cart. “Goodness, and now I remember hearing yours and—and.” She flounders for a moment and stalls her breath, seeming uncertain about whether she wants to utter her next thought or not. “Well…yours and Rust’s names on the news years back now. Just about got down on my knees and thanked the Lord you boys made it out of that horror alive.”

Cathleen reaches out and takes Marty’s free hand, squeezing it in her own for a moment. “After what happened between…well, I don’t mean to be bringing all that up,” she says, shaking her head with a sadder sort of smile. “It was just sure good to hear you got closure for all those poor families. You two were always a force to be reckoned with back in the old days.”

Behind Cathleen, as if on miraculous cue, Marty watches as Rust and Lilah turn into the opposite end of the cereal aisle and start pushing the buggy in his direction. His heart does a somersault in his chest and he laughs for lack of anything else, all at once bright and happy and so goddamn relieved he’s lived long enough to reach this moment.

“I like to think we still are,” he says, grinning, and when she slants him a narrow look he only tips his head to nod behind her.

Rust had spotted them from a distance and has already had an entire silent conversation with Marty using nothing but his eyes. He has Lilah’s hand clasped in his own, though his body is relaxed and he moves without hurry, smiling just the tiniest bit when Cathleen turns around and lets out a loud shriek that makes a few of the other shoppers turn around and stare.

“Hey there, Miss Cathleen,” Rust says, almost bashful while Lilah hides herself halfway behind his legs. “Been a while.”

“You might as well knock me over with a feather,” Cathleen says, slightly more composed now, hands come up to cover her mouth while her eyes start brimming with tears. “Y’all know I can’t hardly believe my eyes. Is that really you, Rustin Cohle? Look at you, it can’t be—all your pretty hair’s gone silver now.”

Rust dips his head a bit, mouth turned up on one side. “Happens to the best and worst of us, I ‘spose. You look just as pretty as I remember.”

“What a charmer you are,” Cathleen says with a tiny laugh, sniffing now as she wipes under her eyes. “Well give me a hug, babydoll. I won’t strangle you like I did poor Marty.”

She goes up on her toes and wraps an arm around Rust’s neck, careful not to bump him too much before turning her eyes down to smile at Lilah.

“And—and who might this beautiful young lady be?” she asks, politely staggered in a way that suggests she can’t even begin to fathom who or what she’s looking at. She glances between Rust and Marty, a marquee of surprise and curiosity running across her face all at once.

Rust reaches down to smooth a hand over the top of Lilah’s head, gently coaxing her out from behind him. “This is Miss Cathleen,” he says, while both Cathleen and Marty look on as Lilah peers up at the older lady. “She used to work with me and Grampa back when we were police detectives a long time ago. You can tell her your name.”

“Hi, Miss Cathleen,” Lilah says quietly, still keeping two fingers hooked through one of Rust’s belt loops as she reaches out to shake the hand Cathleen leans down to offer. “I’m Lilah.”

“That’s a fine and pretty name,” Cathleen says with one of her trademark smiles, straightening back up when Marty clears his throat beside her. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sweetheart.”

“Lilah is my oldest girl’s—uh, Audrey’s daughter,” Marty says before Cathleen can turn to ask him, caught midair with her mouth halfway into forming the question. “She’s staying with me and Rust for the weekend.”

Cathleen blinks at that, eyes swiveling between all three of them now, lips closing around an unspoken _oh_. She always was a smart woman and didn’t put up with anybody’s finer bullshit back in their bullpen days, Marty knows, but he suspects there’s pieces of the puzzle she hasn’t quite put together just yet.

“I hadn’t known you were living together,” Cathleen says a bit warily. Word must’ve not gotten around to her on the grapevine yet, even after all these years, though it wasn’t like she’d be shooting the shit and crushing beer cans at cop’s night with the likes of Steve Geraci and even Bobby Lutz.

“Uh,” Marty says sheepishly, smiling and catching Rust’s eye. “Well—you see.”

Newly emboldened, Lilah takes the moment upon herself to finally step forward and fill any gaps in the conversation, giggling like Cathleen had laid out some kind of silly joke.

“Of course Poppy and Grampa live together,” she says, tutting as she swings Rust’s left hand in her own so his gold band catches just enough in the light. “They’re _married!_ ”  
  


* * *  
  


Somehow, someway—Rust doesn’t really know but figures Lilah probably had something to do with it, though he can’t remember for sure—, they end up getting ice cream.

Miss Cathleen’s treat, which also isn’t something he was expecting when he rolled out of bed this morning, but he takes it in stride and digs a bite out of the banana split he’s currently helping Lilah eat her way through. Marty sits across from him next to Cathleen, dutifully eating his way around a small cone he tried to refuse three different times before she told him to hush up and get something good before she decided for him.

(She’d cried and hiccupped most of the way out into the grocery store parking lot while they helped her load her bags into the car, Marty pulling her against his side and rubbing her shoulder while she dug a tissue out of her pocketbook and said something weepy about _I prayed, I prayed on it for a long time…)_

The Dairy Queen they’re sitting in now is humming with the low sound of refrigerators and the occasional whir of a blender and smells a little like cooked waffles and chocolate. Rust reaches over to wipe a smear of whipped cream off Lilah’s cheek and crumples the napkin up in his fist for later. Cathleen takes a sip of her milkshake and works the straw up and down in the cup, finding it still too thick to drink, and pops the lid off to stick a spoon into the ice cream instead.

“So you knew Grampa and Poppy a really long time ago,” Lilah says around a mouthful of strawberry ice cream. “Like when my mommy was little?”

“Yes ma’am,” Cathleen says, smiling brightly. “I can even remember when your mama was about your age and Mar—uh, your Grampa brought her into the station just before Christmas one year. She’d made little candy cane reindeer and gave me one for the cup on my desk.”

“That’s cool,” Lilah says politely, and then looks up as she twirls her spoon between her fingers. “Did Grampa and Poppy kiss under the mistletoe then, too?”

Marty promptly chokes on his bite of ice cream and Rust only sits there, steady as a stone, wondering the lengths to which this child can and will go to throw them under the bus without remorse.

To her credit, Cathleen only laughs and shakes her head. “No, honey, at least not that year—no kissing policy at work.”

Their groceries are slowly sweating in the car and Marty still might crawl under the table and die at this rate, but that doesn’t stop Rust’s mouth quirking up into a smile while he cuts a few pieces of banana for Lilah to eat so she doesn’t make a mess. Cathleen’s laughter is warm and genuine, sweet as it always was, and when she tells old stories about the time Marty’s favorite coffee mug went missing for two weeks and how an office full of state detectives could never figure out who was stealing all the toilet paper from the locker room in the summer of ’98, they laugh along with her.

Eventually the ice cream gets melted and eaten and Cathleen doesn’t make them dawdle, leading the way back out into the afternoon heat.

“It’s been so good seeing y’all,” she says, pecking Marty on the cheek this time when she goes to hug him goodbye. “A real blessing, and I mean that.”

“Probably not a blessing you ever figured you’d count,” Marty says around a sheepish kind of laugh, squeezing her elbow as they part. Not embarrassed so much as in some latent stage of amazement, Rust thinks, considering they just had ice cream with their granddaughter and a woman who once watched them beat each other bruised and bloody in a parking lot.

Cathleen gives him a wry little smile, expression gone a touch mysterious. “You don’t know what kind of blessings I counted on, Martin Hart. But I’ll count this one.”

When she hugs Rust goodbye she leans in closer than she had before, soft and solid in his arms, and he suddenly feels that much more grateful for her hot cups of black coffee and how she’d always put a special order in for his supplies without being asked. Little things, though they added up into something bigger over the years.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you smile as much as you have today,” Cathleen says, patting his back. “Happy for you, baby. You take care and don’t be a stranger anymore if you can help it. You and Marty both.”

Rust tells her he won’t and means it, here on the cusp of the endless golden summer ahead.  
  
  
  



End file.
